by Tatjana Soli
One evening as they rested against a series of large boulders, each as big as a house, the wolves came running in, announcing an attack was imminent. The warriors mounted and rode off, directing the women and children to hide in the rocks.
Anne could hear the gunshots and considered running out to her deliverers, although in the murk of battle she was as frightened of the soldiers’ bullets as of the warriors’. What if the army mistook her for an Indian in her native clothing and her sun-darkened skin? Even within the tribe she traveled in, there were many with lighter skin that betokened white blood in their veins. Would her being with child make the soldiers recoil? By the same token, the Indians might well shoot her fleeing form for treachery, especially since she carried Snake Man’s child away with her. So she made the only choice it seemed possible to make—she hid with her oppressors.
The warriors had ridden off in the opposite direction to lead the army away and buy the women and children time to make their escape. When they returned hours later they forecast that the soldiers would figure out their error and be back by morning. The camp dared not rest even a few hours but only stopped to chew on some dried corn and then took flight again. The ponies were exhausted and walked gingerly along the dimly lit caliche plain. The tribe’s best chance was to go into the heart of the most inhospitable country and outlast the army.
The moon was new, the starlight faint, and the horses stumbled on stones and in holes dug by desert creatures. In her condition, Anne was allowed to ride a pony while the others walked to alleviate the strain on the animals, but eventually her horse seemed to be doing a kind of drunken sideways stagger. Worried that he might fall and roll over on her, she chose to dismount and walk. She put her hands underneath her stomach and tried to hold her belly still to avoid the pain of motion. Although as a girl she had witnessed women’s lying-in, she did not know the particulars of what to expect and longed for the help of her mother.
Such a crippled caravan could have been overcome easily, but wolves reported that the cavalry instead made a lengthy stop at their abandoned camp and commenced to burn it down to the last bit. In that delay the Indians and Anne made their escape.
Days later, when the various branches of the tribe reunited, it was discovered that one group had not been as lucky as the others. Yellow Hair had gone in one direction; another commander went in the opposite. This captain had come upon fleeing Cheyenne consisting mostly of old people, women, and children. Only a small number of warriors were there to guard their flight. The soldiers opened fire and killed the warriors immediately. When the helpless hid in the rocks, refusing to surrender, they were all gunned down with no attempt to take them prisoner. Not only that, the bodies were scalped and some of the women defiled. Anne pondered over the veracity of these stories. How could her own people act in such a barbarous fashion?
* * *
AFTER A FEW particularly grueling hours of flight, Ann lay down on the hard ground and refused to get up, even at the threat of bodily harm. Finally one of the warriors handed off his weapons and allowed her to lean on his shoulder, and in such manner they made slow progress.
A more solid darkness replaced the black of night. Almost sleeping on her feet, Anne just missed walking into a wall of solid stone. Only the jerk on her arm by the warrior saved her serious collision. The path ahead narrowed and sloped downward, the hard earth gradually replaced by soft sand. Anne felt anxious, but the warriors appeared sure of the way.
The coolness of the air near the rock revived her. She held out a hand to trace her way along the wall, able to let go of her guardian’s supporting shoulder. Although she could barely discern the human and animal shapes moving ahead of her, there was a feeling of constriction after the days and nights spent out in the wide open. She had no way to gauge the elevation, but bent her head back and looked up the height of four men to discern the midnight sky against the surrounding rock walls. She felt entombed. They were descending into a kind of vaporous Hades, the cool air now growing moist, and over the thud of feet and hooves, she could make out the sweet sound of trickling water.
After a time, the men at the head of the line lit brush torches, and the walls turned a burnished copper as the passage widened again and disgorged the group into a small amphitheater, surrounded on all sides by high limestone parapets. The bottom was sandy, and a gentle stream ran through it. Tender grasses grew along its edges, and the ponies hungrily set to graze even before their bridles and saddles could be removed. Women and children collapsed where they stood, asleep almost before their heads touched the earth. The men sat and smoked a pipe before posting sentries and themselves resting. Not until morning did the women pitch teepees and start small, smokeless cooking fires.
As Anne sat drowsy in the morning light, a deer came out of the mist to drink along the stream and eat the succulent grasses. Before she could understand what had happened, the animal stumbled and fell on its side, an arrow poking out of its ribs. None had eaten in three days, and the deer was cut up quickly. Inside the abdominal cavity they found the fetus of a fawn. All of it was put on the fire to cook. The women gave Anne a boiled piece of the fawn as big as her hand, a delicacy so tender they instructed that she should eat the bones as well as the meat and skin. In the past year she had eaten bear, frog, squirrel, and skunk in her captivity, besides boiled bones, roots, and tree bark, learning to be content with whatever was on offer. Her famished state made fastidiousness shy, although she still refused the great nourishment of drinking deer’s blood, of which the others partook.
In their much depleted state it was decided they should remain in their rock fortress while the cavalry, having lost their track, moved farther and farther away. Anne found the cloistered location strangely comforting, the cool shade of the walls blocking off any view except the heavens directly overhead, which calmed her and directed her thoughts upward. Neha and she were allowed to wander the mazelike walls and found remnants of previous occupations, from the petrified remains of campfires to animal skeletons, either brought for slaughter or strayed in to die in solitude. The place had much the aspect of a natural cathedral, a refuge for man and beast away from the relentless, devouring wilderness outside.
The weathered scrawlings of figures on walls resembled ones she had seen inside the teepees of her chiefs, which recorded the important victories of the tribe. In addition to warriors, horses, and buffalo, here were pictures of the vanished tribe’s enemy, the white man, in both known and unknown uniforms. Curious, Anne looked for the evidence of captives, especially women, although she was unsure that she wanted to find it. There was none. Such persons were not deemed worthy of including in history.
Against the outermost walls were crude structures of mud and clay over wattle, with low barrier walls of stone. Ducking her head inside one such shelter she found a room feral and untamed, a veritable bear’s den. In the tarry, dusty corner used as fire pit, she found a hammered silver frame holding a small cameo painting of the Virgin. Neha watched the tears come to Anne’s eyes.
“Is this your God?”
“Not mine. But the Holy Mother.”
Next to it was the tooled metal of a foreign helmet, much rusted.
She picked up both, amazed by the fine workmanship, which far surpassed any items that had been in her own family’s possession. She knew from schoolbooks of the Spanish conquistadors, who ultimately had been defeated by both the Indians and the land. She believed the two relics were signs: the first showing that Providence promised her eventual freedom, and the second pointing to the folly of the white man thinking he would conquer a land so cruelly indifferent to all human effort. The Indian, as far as she could tell, was the only race that could endure for any period the inhospitable clime, yet even for them the price paid was to remain in a perpetual state of vulnerability and want, abject and slave to capricious nature.
Ann slipped the palm-sized icon into her inner pocket, feeling its papist protection was as close as she could come to a Bible, heresy as suc
h a thought would be to her family. Trying to win favor, she presented the antique helmet to Snake Man, who looked at it skeptically but slipped it on his head.
He had hardly spoken a sentence to her other than to give orders, but now he spoke over her head to a crevice in the rock wall behind her.
“Years ago with the Comanche we were attacked by the Texan soldiers. The chief was a very brave man. He rode in front of his warriors and stopped in clear view of the enemy. No one understood why he was so fearless. He was killed immediately. When they pulled off his heavy robe, they discovered he wore the breastplate of a Spanish suit. One made like this hat. He thought by wearing it he would be as invincible as the white man. Ever since, I have known the white medicine does not work for us.”
He threw off the helmet and spit in the dirt.
* * *
THAT NIGHT WHILE ANNE SAT by the fire she felt a deep drag in her belly. The women indicated it was not yet time for the baby so she tried to ignore the insistent tugging, concentrating instead on the crescent of moon which rose silver in the narrow gap of sky, mixing with the rock walls lit copper from the fires. She fingered the icon in her pocket, longing to take it out and take comfort in it, yet knowing that it would excite the covetousness of the wives. Whatever came into her possession, they wished to take away, either stealing it for themselves or destroying it to demoralize her.
Had the owner of the icon forgotten it on his journey? Or, more ominously, had this unknowingly become his final resting place where he succumbed, sequestered in this foreign rock sarcophagus? The Spaniards had been washed away from this country with only a few buildings and names to recall their ever having conquered it. She did not understand the confidence of her own people in thinking they would last better. She thought of her family’s fate, thriving one moment, annihilated the next, and now her own desperate and tenuous condition.
Just then she felt an especially painful tug as if a small animal was trapped inside her and trying to claw its way out. A gush of warmth spread between her legs. When she let out a gasp, Neha looked at her alarmed.
In the midst of hiding and flight, a woman going through parturition was not a welcome burden. The men moved off impatiently and explained that on no account was she allowed to make any noise. Anne let Neha and the women lead her back to the wattle hut in which she had found the icon.
They set about making the sparse accommodation suit as well as was possible. One bundled sticks to sweep out the most offending debris, including animal bones. Neha started a flame in the ancient fire pit to ward off the damp, and laid down a buffalo robe for her comfort. Another went scavenging, returning with cut poles, which she hammered into the floor next to Anne. She was made to understand that she should grip these during her pains. A knotted cotton cloth was given her to bite down on. Outside, two pits were dug. A woman heated water in one, ladled from the stream with the helmet that the chief had tossed away. The other pit was readied to bury the afterbirth. Once all was ready, the women settled down to smoke a pipe and spend long hours in storytelling. Neha, noticing Anne’s cracked lips, rubbed hot fat on them. The act brought tears, Anne being so unused to tenderness of any sort.
The birth was a difficult one that lasted through the long night and the whole of the next day before a daughter was born. She gave her the name Solace to commemorate the loss of her dear Elizabeth.
Anne had not considered what a child might mean to her status within the community, but when she looked down into the eyes of her firstborn, she realized that everything must change. In earnest she began her plans for escape, no longer content to remain mired in apathy and despair, much less passive hope for release by death. The small face suckling at her breast had become her reason to live.
During the birthing process, the women took off her deerskin dress. Anne tossed and turned in her only remaining garment from civilization, her cotton shift with the pocket that held the Virgin. In a spasm of pain, she had rolled over, and the icon had fallen out onto the buffalo robe. While Neha watched, one of the wives snatched it up, looked at it briefly, and tossed it into the fire.
Toward the aborigines of the country no one can indulge a more friendly feeling than myself, or would go further to reclaim them from their wandering habits and make them a happy, prosperous people … Humanity has often wept over the fate of the aborigines of this country … To follow to the tomb the last of his race and to tread on the graves of extinct nations excite melancholy reflections. But true philanthropy reconciles the mind to these vicissitudes as it does to the extinction of one generation of people to make room for another. In the monuments and fortresses of an unknown people, spread over the extensive regions of the West, we behold the memorials of a once powerful race, which was exterminated or has disappeared to make room for the existing savage tribes … What good man would prefer a country covered with forests and ranged by a few thousand savages to our extensive Republic, studded with cities, towns, and prosperous farms … and filled with all the blessings of liberty, civilization, and religion?… Doubtless it will be painful to leave the graves of their fathers; but what do they more than our ancestors did or than our children are now doing? To better their condition in an unknown land our forefathers left all that was dear in earthly objects … Can it be cruel in this Government when, by events which it can not control, the Indian is made discontented in his ancient home, to purchase his lands, to give him a new and extensive territory, to pay the expense of his removal, and support him a year in his new abode? How many thousands of our own people would gladly embrace the opportunity of removing to the West on such conditions!
—PRESIDENT ANDREW JACKSON, “CASE FOR THE INDIAN REMOVAL ACT,” DECEMBER 1830
The evil, Sir, is enormous; the inevitable suffering incalculable. Do not stain the fair fame of the country … Nations of dependent Indians, against their will, under color of law, are driven from their homes into the wilderness. You cannot explain it; you cannot reason it away … Our friends will view this measure with sorrow, and our enemies alone with joy. And we ourselves, Sir, when the interests and passions of the day are past, shall look back upon it, I fear, with self-reproach, and a regret as bitter as unavailing.
—EDWARD EVERETT, SPEECHES ON THE PASSAGE OF THE BILL FOR THE REMOVAL OF THE INDIANS DELIVERED IN THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES, 1830
SMOKEY HILL RIVER, 1867
Custer had strode through the War doing what he wanted, which neatly coincided with the wishes of his superiors, foremost of those being Sheridan. Now he felt the brunt of the workaday military that consisted of taking orders. Orders that more often than not were ill-considered.
As soon as he arrived in Kansas, he sensed that General Hancock did not have a grasp of the Indian situation. The tribes were suing for peace, yet Hancock niggled them with petty demands, threatened use of the army against them. How could anyone be won over in such manner? When depredations against settlers occurred, he did not see the obvious, that it was the work of a limited number of young warriors. Instead, he blamed the chiefs for not controlling their men.
Hancock had demanded a parley in a village, but when the army got there the Indians had fled, obviously scared to have soldiers near their women and children after Chivington’s massacre at Sand Creek in Colorado Territory. His response was to burn down the village and send Custer to hunt them down.
* * *
CUSTER CHASED UP one hill and down another, the Indians always managing to stay out of sight. When moving targets were sighted on the horizon, the distance made it difficult to guess the threat. A native scout taught Custer the method of setting up two sticks and sighting over both to see if there was movement. Most often it was simply creosote bushes or boulders that in the mirage appeared to gain motion. Less frequently it would be a pack of lost mules or donkeys. The skeletons of these littered the prairie. Least often of all would appear Indians. Even when his cavalry did trap Indians, they protested they were on their way to a reservation.
—Are
you peaceable?
—We are friends.
He guessed they would say the same even as they commenced to separate his scalp from his head.
Orders were to attack nonreservation Indians, but they were hard to find. After a time, any Indians would do. Frontier people screamed for revenge, and Sherman wanted results.
Rumors spread about the Fetterman massacre the previous winter in Wyoming Territory, and it put fear in all. Eighty men dead. There were dark whispers that Fetterman, a war hero, and Captain Brown committed suicide by shooting each other at the moment of capture. It was the worst defeat in army history.
* * *
CUSTER DROVE HIS REGIMENT hard, riding day and night, covering twenty-five miles of territory a day. The land was deceptive in its aspect: choked ravines, dead-end tabletop bluffs, landmarks that appeared to be only a mile away in reality taking ten miles to reach. The uniform terrain, on closer inspection, was gouged by deep ravines that could hide either a whole regiment or an entire Cheyenne war party.
Reduced to using the north star to lead them, his seasoned guides were like compasses with a broken north, regularly leading them astray.
It was a great relief when at last they reached the river and set up camp—the horses put out to graze on tender green grass, the men able to wash for the first time in days. Teamsters rolled in with their wagons, and cooks started fires with the comforting smells of coffee and food. The night sky swung overhead like a great, dark, twisting carousel.
He knew no such contentment as camp after a long day’s ride, the reward of tent and camaraderie. It put Custer in mind of his war days. He looked up and down the tented streets, the canvas glowing from the light within, reminding him of Chinamen’s lanterns. If ever he mustered out of the army he would spend his summer nights sleeping in a tent under the stars, even if it must be in his own backyard.
